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My big meal was Thanksgiving Eve and I ate too much and had some stomach problems yesterday, not leaving the house, thus my only photo was this one of a cow in the field across the street. 🙂
“The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other milk.”
~ Ogden Nash
¡Pura Vida!
Yeah . . . that’s sort of how I get it – every morning at breakfast – from a slanted, sideways view (obliquely) with the distant hills lit first, then part of the town and then it reaches my tiny patch of wildness. Kind of fun – makes me smile – and it’s a great way to start a day! 🙂
The feature photo is of sunrise over Atenas as seen from 105 Roca Verde yesterday morning. The sun is rising from behind a hill to my far right, thus not hitting me yet, but it soon will! 🙂 Our world can be magical!
My Vistas Gallery has lots of different kinds of sunrises & sunsets – all of which are fun! 🙂
“There’s a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them.”
― Jo Walton
🙂
¡Pura Vida!
“Practice any art . . . not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.” ~Kurt Vonnegut
And that quote, I just found, describes exactly what I am doing with my photography, with this blog, and with me being “Retired in Costa Rica!” I am becoming, discovering and growing. Living in and focusing on nature is my idea of life now, “almost heaven.” 🙂
The feature photo of a Red-eyed Tree Frog in the hand of another nature explorer at Aguila de Osa Lodge, Drake Bay, is an example of what lights up my life! As is the frog on the cover of my latest photo book below, photographed with my simple cell phone at the Danta Corcovado Lodge, Los Patos Ranger Station, Corcovado National Park. Frogs are almost as dear to me as birds! 🙂
becoming, discovering and growing
¡Pura Vida!
Some mornings I just walk the circle drive over the hill my house hangs on the side of. Near the top in just one spot, directly above my house, is this view of Atenas, Alajuela Province, Costa Rica – the tranquil little coffee-farming town where I’m living out the rest of my life, Retired in Costa Rica! The town slogan is Mejor Clima del Mundo, “The best weather in the world!” A subjective opinion of course! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
On the front end of the cow pasture across from my house are a couple of short, squatty trees that remind me of the acacia trees I saw in the Masai Mara and Serengeti of East Africa and I’m embarrassed that I don’t yet have the identification of these here. But all trees are worth showing photos of, named or not! 🙂
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
— Kahlil Gibran
¡Pura Vida!
With no city ordinances against having chickens in your yard, you might be awakened at sunrise anywhere in Atenas by the “cock-a-doo·dle-doo” of a rooster. Yet most roosters have been shy of my camera while this chicken (feature photo) on my “Country Lane” (8th Ave.) walk almost posed for me. But here’s a rooster at right from earlier on Calle Nueva.
And for more photos, see my Atenas Chickens and Roosters Gallery.
“Then, early, early, early in the morning – just as in countless Disney films – I heard a rooster crow. But guess what? They don’t do it just once.” ~Vivian Vande Velde
🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Close to home I usually photograph my most birds along the 1 km or so up the hill from my house. Today I met a neighbor to show her where I find them and we spotted or recognized a minimum of 12 species. Here’s photos of 8, having no good photos of female Blue-black Grassquit, Hoffman’s Woodpecker, White-winged Dove and Inca Dove. The two doves I have so many photos of I just didn’t even try to photograph today. 🙂 The featured image is an immature Tropical Kingbird which is fairly common all over Costa Rica. CLICK an image below to enlarge and/or start a manual slide show.
See all my BIRDS galleries from many countries or just Costa Rica Birds if you prefer! 🙂
If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.
—Aristotle
¡Pura Vida!
The Japanese health system has developed the practice of shin-yoku, literally forest bath –
“spending mindful time in the woods. It is beneficial for soul and body as it boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure, aids sleep, improves mood, and increases personal energy. It has become a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japan.” ~from Chapter 7 of book The Future We Choose
I highly recommend this book to anyone concerned about climate change and the future of our globe. It is full of optimism in the human race, even though if we don’t start doing more to eliminate carbon dioxide, our earth will begin self-destructing by 2050. And the above passage reminded me of an older book I also highly recommend, especially if you are a parent or teacher: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv.
And lastly, encourage world leaders to do more to return earth to nature! Thankfully the U.S. will soon be back in the Paris Agreement with a real president coming into the White House! As the worse offenders, the U.S., China and India must do more to reduce carbon dioxide, but it is still a job for the whole world and the UN tries as seen in this latest summit agreement as another tiny step forward . . .
Read about it with BirdLife International’s article: UN summit on biodiversity: world leaders’ pledge for nature. The world is still losing its nature at an increasing rate and we are generally doing too little too late! But if everybody would just plant a tree, it would make a difference! The nature-deficit-disorder in the peoples of the world is great!
For relaxing photos of the forests, see my gallery Flora & Forest. or all my Costa Rica Galleries that include links to my nature photos in Tennessee, Africa, and many other places as well as all over Costa Rica! And the feature photo is of the Lower Falls of Nauyaca Waterfall, Dominical, Costa Rica.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
—Albert Einstein
¡Pura vida!
I’ve always had a wall calendar by my desk to see the current month at a glance even though appointments, etc. are on my electronic calendar. I mark only my trips on the wall calendar. And for the last few years I’ve zeroed in on calendars by the Costa Rica Nature Photographer PUCCI. The one I just bought for 2021 (feature photo) has a greater purpose than just nature, part of the price I paid goes toward planting trees in Cost Rica! It is called Árboles Mágicos and supports one of the best ways to fight Global Warming! Our trees absorb some of that carbon dioxide the fossil fuel cars are emitting and Costa Rica is already working on that, planning a future of only electric cars. And if you don’t already know, Costa Rica already has 100% clean electricity now! 🙂 The United States should be embarrassed that this little developing country is so far ahead of them! The Árboles Mágicos proposition in a one minute video en español:
“Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish.”
― Munia Khan
¡Pura Vida!
And for those interested in more details, this year (2020) I had Pucci’s “Backroads & Trails” Calender with photos of twelve trails/roads, eight of which I’ve been on! 🙂 I love this place!
Now here is just one month from the new 2021 calendar to show how it looks:
And here’s the back with all 12 month’s photos shown if you can see the small image. The majority are flowering trees.
And of course I have a Trees Gallery as a new sub-gallery of my Flora & Forest Gallery. 🙂 All photos made in Costa Rica, the most bio-diverse country in the world!
¡Pura Vida!
I love walking up and down my hill and the others around me, even if they leave me winded sometimes! 🙂 And when I take my camera (in addition to the cellphone) I can zoom in on things like our village church or the cows on the next hill over! It’s fun! And one of these new views is from my terrace and living room! (The feature photo) And of course these were made a few days ago with sunshine before the hurricane rains started. 🙂 Yesterday’s post of cloudiness was what I expected more of plus rains, but this hurricane did not have a lot of rain like the last one. It is partly overcast and partly sunny today.
CLICK an image to see it larger:
“There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.” —Charlotte Eriksson
See also my Costa Rica Vistas Gallery.
¡Pura Vida!
🙂